Military and civilian aircrafts, including fixed-wing aircrafts and rotary-wing aircrafts, may be exposed to threats by hostile forces, for example, terrorists or military forces. In the past three decades, numerous aircrafts have been downed by InfraRed (IR) guided missiles, for example, short-range man-portable shoulder-fired IR guided missiles.
Some aircrafts may be equipped with a Wide-body Integrated Platform Protection System (WIPPS), for example, a WIPPS InfraRed Counter Measures (IRCM) suite. Such systems include, for example, imaging Ultra-Violet (UV) electro-optic Missile Warning Sensors (MWS) and a pulse-Doppler radar MWS, for sensing (namely, detecting and tracking) of incoming threats.
Unfortunately, utilization of two different multi-sensor sub-systems makes the system heavy and prohibitively expensive, particularly for smaller aircraft. Additionally, the use of a second MWS (e.g., constantly active radar system) results in continuous electro-magnetic emissions from the aircraft.